Bluescreen
by Orm
Summary: Deidara–centric Akatsuki fic set in a cyberpunk/sci–fi AU. Contains made–up slang, cyborgs and swearing. Mostly gen but hints of SasoDei if you're looking for them.
1. 1:0: PROLOGUE

_This started out as a one-shot lament at the lack of sci-fi AU in this fandom, but then I sort of couldn't stop writing it. Here's hoping I can keep it up – I'm notoriously bad at this sort of thing. xD' MMM, DEDICATION. TASTES LIKE FAILURE. If anyone can link me any OTHER sci-fi/cyberpunk AU fic, any character, any pairing, PLS DO, 'cause I can hardly find any at all._

_Anyway, here you go. Deidara-centric AU Akatsuki-fic. ENJOY PLS._

**1.0**

**prologue**

I'm on the tunnels, the first time I see him, between Pilgrim's Over and Riley at one fifty. He sits down opposite me and at first I think he's a human with an implant, this little gleam of metal at his jaw and my other eye telling me he's got wifi, but he's an android, got these exposed wires everywhere and that sort of weird look to his skin, yeah? So an oldish one, or something, 'cause the ones you get from even a couple years ago you can't tell they're not people unless you know what to look for and you really really look. But it's obvious with him, and it's weird cause he looks like someone's toy, you know? _Toy_. He looks like he'd be pretty if his skin didn't look preserved and you couldn't see the wires, got these big, bored brown eyes and too-perfect face and looks like someone made him to look that way, someone who liked touching little boys – 'cause he looks like he's fourteen or something, yeah. That's kinda _wrong_, except no-one gets hurt when it's a robot so I guess it's not wrong so much as just really creepy. I guess. Except he's on his own on the tunnels and it's nearly two, and he's giving me this look like he can tell what I'm thinking and anyone who ever _did_ want to touch him ended up missing limbs. It's creepy. I kind of want to spam his inbox just to see what'll happen, but I don't. He's wigging me out, yeah? I hate androids.

I get off at Brink Hovers, even though my stop's Three Wizards. Takes me about half an hour longer than usual to get home but I couldn't stand another five stops in a section with him.

Anyway, the air does me good, yeah.

So I walk home through the chilly night streets and think about other things until my skin stops crawling and I forget him.


	2. 1:1

**1.1**

I don't reckon I'll see him again, or I hope I won't, or both, I'm optimistic _some_ of the time. But then next time I talk to Kisame – he's a shark guy, voluntary beta gene-freak like me – he tells me he's got in on this job and they could use someone with my skills and next thing I know I'm on this contract and it's not really a _job_ so much as like ... a sort of all-engulfing _thing_ that pays your bills and covers your tracks as long as you do the jobs they give you.

It's alright, really, to begin with. At first I'm just doing these little odd jobs here and there on my own that're maybe just a little bit more illegal than the stuff I usually do – well, not really _more illegal_, but the kind where the admin would actually care instead of your bottom-level street crap where no-one's seriously gonna give a damn if some ex-lab lowlife took out some guild boss for another guild boss, yeah? Not that I mind. Like I said, it's alright, yeah. I'm only really talking to Kisame about it, that's all the words I have about it with anyone except the briefs from the boss. It's kind of weird talking to Kisame about it, too. He's sort of .. what's the word, like ... recipient? retaining? Whatever, he won't say much. I catch him at Bright Oryx one evening, the day after I take out the reservoir down Bile. There's this other guy with him, black hair, same age as me or a bit older – either that or like two months old, 'cause for the fourteen point six seconds I see him before he leaves he's got that sort of flat, I-don't-care-about-you thing going that people like in androids and humans can't pull off that easy – but nah, he's real, my other eye's not giving me any feedback off him, no implants, nothing.

Anyway he leaves, and when I ask who he is Kisame ignores it at first and just says hi and grins – which is alarming if you've never talked to any real proper twistgenes before. He's got sharp teeth – not just his canines like the trendy mid-level night kids get done for their fifteenth birthdays. He's got all of them, yeah, they're all sharp, and serrated. Like a shark. If you really pay attention you can tell him being blue is more than just a dye job, but most people don't pay enough attention to tell things like that.

"Hey." I look over to where robot-guy who isn't a robot went, but he's gone already. "Who was that? Don't think I've seen him around before, yeah."

And then he gets all ... short with me. It's weird. All he says is "Colleague." Not as if that's all I need to know, but like that's all I _get_ to know. He's leaning on his sword, too – he calls it Samehada. It looks like a cross between a chainsaw on trip and some kind of fucked up blue pineapple. It's bio-engineered, so it spazzes out if anyone tries to use it except him, and if you shank it, it bleeds, but I only ever saw that happen once, and the guy who did it ended up in bits you could pick up with chopsticks. The shift of his grip on the hilt now is honest to Jah kind of threatening, like he's thinking about giving up on the hufu. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know he's a box-square psycho, yeah, but I've known him long enough to think he wouldn't beef on me just for asking questions or something, but then he hasn't hardly answered any of my questions about this job. Like I said. It's always, stick at it, or, the money's good enough, right? and sometimes he looks kind of uncomfortable. So I'm starting to think maybe he's realised he's roped me into something I'd be happier not a part of, and I say so.

He just shrugs, not quite defensive because he doesn't really _do_ that, and says, "Wait and see."

Wait and fucking see.

What the hell is that.

So I tell him, fuck this, and I tell him I'll find some other work, but privately I'm regretting it 'cause damn if the money _isn't_ good, and it's all very well getting paid to demolish stuff but most of the time they expect you to bring your own explosives. I mix them, yeah, I wire them, I brew them, but that doesn't mean it's cheap to get all the bits I need to do that. I remember a few years back Kisame asked me why a kid with no morals and a decent hand for a knife wasn't just taking quick shank-and-run assassination crap 'cause there'd be more jobs and you only pay for a decent knife once. Even if he'd been right and specialising didn't end up getting me further, I wouldn't've cared. An explosion's something special, and if the leftbrain idiots who think it's just a means to an end want to pay me to make my art, then that's fine by me, yeah.

Never much liked hand to hand stuff anyway. I don't like getting blood in my hands, it tastes rank.

-

-

I'm halfway home when I get the next job in my inbox – I'm in the middle of crossing the road and it pings in my head, that tiny little whirring starting up half-in half-out my skull. I'm used to that sort of thing, well used to it: if that trike hadn't been going like two hundred kph or something it wouldn't have even come near me, yeah. As it is it I only just feel the slipstream tug at my jeans. Feels good, that, that almost-got-me. I'm at the first island now. I figure I'll check the job when I get to the other side of the road, but it keeps flashing or bouncing or whatever, I dunno, it's inside my head and I never found a word for that. It's kind of distracting. Three people swear at me. One girl in the sixth lane whistles when I land on the roof of her car, but I'm off before I can get a look at her or anything.

The job's an easy one, going by the brief, but big. Noticeable. This uptown conference hall's gonna be full of some organisation that the boss thinks would be better off in pieces.

I want to say no, just to prove to Kisame what's what, but I know the hall. I used to stare at it, when I was a kid. It's one of those old neonaissance architectures that's got more statues than doors, but not, like, too much, yeah? A lot of that stuff they get it wrong or something and it just looks stupid, too many angels and dragons like some stone infection or something. But not this one. This one's kinda pretty. Worth destroying. Yeah. And the thought of being able to blow the place up and have it covered so I won't get taken away for it ... I can't say no, yeah.

It eats me for the next few weeks. I don't think about telling anyone screw it when I'm putting together the bomb – I got better things on my mind, yeah. How it's gonna look. How it's gonna sound. How the fire's gonna sear the air and just for a moment that pretty building will be _art_. Perfect. Couldn't turn down an opportunity like this.

All I'm thinking, when I'm standing on the spire of the Lucas Building waiting for the right time, is that next time I see Kisame, he's gonna laugh at me – but then twenty forty-seven thirteen comes and I set it off ... for a split second my other eye flashes a pulse of red through my brain, and then the next split second the bomb goes off.

There's not words for it. "Beautiful" doesn't do it justice. It never does. I can't find any words that say what that moment of fire and noise is like and how perfect it is when it tears through the stone angels, to think, _I did that_, and I don't think any words _exist_. It's art. Sublime, yeah? It's above that. Transcendent or whatever. It's over now anyway, so it doesn't matter any more.

Normally I'd stare at the aftermath for a moment, 'cause there's something like art left in the rubble and the scattering, but there's cops wailing in the distance and that YOU HAVE BEEN PRESENT NEAR THE SCENE OF A CRIME YOU MAY BE CALLED TO WITNESS message flashing in my other eye, so I leg it, and hope that the boss holds his promise straight and I don't end up in questioning.


	3. 1:2

**1.2**

There's a rain warning a couple of minutes before I get home, and I get inside like point eight seconds before it starts burning on the concrete. First monsoon of the year, yeah, they'd been on about it it for weeks now but I completely forgot and I was so wrapped up in that job that I missed the advance warning. It's overdue, too. It goes from dry to torrential in three point five seconds or something, so I make sure all the skylights are closed and prepare myself for a few days indoors and underground. I wish I could afford an umbrella, 'cause I'd love to run in the rain, but those things are seriously expensive, yeah, so I just lie on my back on the kitchen floor and watch it through the skylight. It's unreal, all that water just falling down out the sky like that, but there's a lot of things that don't make sense and I figure life's too short to wonder about it too much when you can just enjoy it, yeah?

I stay like that for a couple of hours, thinking a bit about going in the back to sculpt or something but mostly just sort of hypnotised by the rain, kind of thing, and I'm just thinking about getting up when I get a message. That's weird on its own, yeah, 'cause when it pours like this the internet gets crappy, so people don't usually email each other just when it's just started raining. I always want to ignore it, but when you're trying to do nothing it's always really hard to pretend there isn't something blipping through your brain every point four seconds, so I read it, and thank god it isn't an admin message, 'cause like hell I want to witness for the job I did today. I mean, I could lie, but I know once I got up there in the stand I'd just tell 'em it was me whether I wanted to say it or not, and technically I'm lab property so they'd probably recall me or something and Jah knows I don't want that.

Yeah. Jah knows I don't want that.

It's from the boss, though, which I guess looking back is almost as bad, yeah. Or not. I dunno, it's hard to tell sometimes. It's not a job. It says, _In light of recent events I am considering you for full-time employment_, and that he'll get back to me in a few days and not to reply to this email.

I want to say, I don't need full-time employment, what I get paid for what I do already is more than enough and I like having time to myself, but it said not to reply and there's this _tone_ to the words the boss uses that's like, if I disobey, I'll end up at the bottom of the Rhine with lead in my clothes. So I don't reply. I stare at the rain a moment more but it seems darker than before, so I get up and go put the light on in the back room, pull my gloves off, get out some clay.

It feels so good for my hands to breathe. So, so good. I wouldn't wear the gloves, 'cause it's not like I'm _ashamed_ of being a freak – and man, I've seen twists way worse than mine – but you never know what's on whatever you've just put your hand on, and when that also means you don't know what you've just put your _mouth_ on, then gloves are pretty much a good idea. It's _hell_ when they get infected, yeah.

The clay feels good, too. Been a while since I've done this, 'cause I had to work pretty much non-stop on the bomb for the conference hall to get it done on time. It's cool and wet on my hands, and it tastes like nothing else. It's artificial, yeah, I know that – I've never even touched real clay from a ... a riverbank or whatever it is it's supposed to come from, but I still love it. It's like speaking for my mute mouths. The lab bastards never did manage to work vocal chords into my arms properly. They tried, but they never really worked for talking, and they severed them after I learned to croak Dau Gi Bach with my left hand anyway. I always thought it would be cool to sing in harmony with myself, yeah, but I don't think anything'd be better than clay. I mean, I'd like to be able to get more of the animated stuff, you know, comes to life when you're done with it, but you know, that's like ... well, the same day I can afford the umbrella, yeah, I'll buy some of that clay and I'll make some little birds, and we'll dance in the rain together. Yeah.

-

-

The rain keeps up for another three days, and even after then the water's too deep to go anywhere unless I use the tunnels. I've never much liked them, never liked enclosed spaces like that, and I haven't actually taken them since I saw that fucking creepy android a few months ago. Some of the jobs I've had have been a way away, but I've walked instead of taking a train. I just don't want to run into him again, yeah.

But I'm getting sick of staying inside and by now there's this whole line of birds and dragons and turtles and stuff, all round my room and I don't really like keeping them this long. I'm running out of clay, anyway. So I load some of them in the shelves on the wheelie box and wait until zero forty when there's not gonna be so many people about, and take them out of the bottom door to leave them places. I leave the biggest one, this dragon the size of a dog or something, on the platform up by Peace Zone Central. If I'm lucky it won't get shifted before the morning rush hour. It's hard for _me_ to move it with the little ramp I've got, but then again all the security they have up Peace Zone is really henched-out clinical strong-guys, and if there's one thing the labs did succeed with it was giving me the arm strength of a ten-year-old, yeah – all the muscles had to grow different to make room for the jaw stuff and windpipe and things. People don't generally tell me I hit like a pussy more than once, though, mostly on account of I kick their teeth in before they can say it again.

I unload the last one reaaaally slowly, and by then it's one forty-three and I've ended up at Pilgrim's Over. I haven't seen any androids, and I gotta admit I'm actually a little bit disappointed. Morbid curiosity, yeah? Like, sometimes you end up just looking back over and over at something just _because_ it's really nasty, even though you hate it. I think about hanging around a bit if I don't see anyone after the next train comes but ... nah. Like hell this was just some excuse to look for some creepy-ass robot, yeah.

I stare into the darkness at the end of the platform, waiting for the light from the train that'll come, and then there's this voice by my shoulder: "Did you make that?"

I spin round like someone dropped acid down the back of my shirt – I swear to Jah I never heard anyone coming – and fuck it it's _him_. The android. Right next to me, but he's looking away from me down to where I put the tortoise sculpture at the end of the platform. I can see all these wires at the back of his neck, and here's the fucking creepy bit, yeah – the skin's all raw and red around where the wires go in. I'm starting to think, shit, what if he's not an android? 'Cause seriously, what kind of freak would make a robot like that?

He looks back at me.

Shit. His eyes are real.

_Shit_.

The last guy I saw get implants like that plugged in was experimental and he fucking _died_ after a week or two, yeah. I didn't think they still _did_ that any more –

I'm staring at him. Fuck. He's giving me this look like, complete and utter disdain, and just then the train comes screaming in like a saving angel on wheels, and I'm just like, "This is my train, yeah," and he's all "oh really, mine too," and he steps in next to me when the door opens.

Fuck fuck fuck.

He doesn't say anything else to me, yeah, just stands there giving me this look like he's almost amused or something – not angry, but like I'm complete scum. I'm just glad he's not talking, 'cause there's something about his voice that's just too fucking weird, that sounds _wrong_, yeah. I wish I could get off the next stop and walk, but I can't with the rain, so I just I don't look at him all the way back, and when I get home and go to sleep I have nightmares for the first time since I left the lab.


	4. 1:3

_And this is where things actually ... start moving :3 Thanks for the reviews, guys, I'm really glad people like this! I was a wee bit worried that perhaps the reason there's not much of this sort of genre in the Naruto fandom is that like ... no-one wants to read it. XD_

**1.3**

"He said," I pause a moment to go find the email so I can copy-paste it, "_In light of recent events I am considering you for full-time employment_."

"Whoah. Seriously?"

Kisame's slower than me 'cause he actually types and stuff. He's never wanted to get an implant and honestly I don't blame him. I wouldn't have one either, if it was my choice.

"Yeah, except he said not to reply and I haven't heard from him for like six days or something."

There's this pause, like he's thinking or something, before it tells me he's typing again, and then he says, "He takes a while over important decisions."

"What, and employees is important decisions?"

Another pause. It's almost as bad as talking to him in person, yeah. I can imagine his face in that sort of grim frown he gets, where you can tell if it was anyone else he'd be looking away or something.

He still isn't replying. I start to say, "What the hell is it that's so difficult for you to decide what to say about it?" but then it says he's typing something so I delete it and wait for him.

"Look, it's complicated, alright, if he takes you you'll find out and if he doesn't it's not going to matter."

"I'd still want to know!"

"Trust me, you wouldn't be in any state to worry about it." That one comes too quick, like for once he didn't stop to think. There's reasons I don't like messaging people like this, yeah. It's too easy to lie. _I_ take a moment to reply this time. He could mean loads of things with that, really, but I can't see how any of them would be _good_.

"So what, you mean wiped, or dead?"

He doesn't reply. All of a sudden I'm really, really glad Kisame's not much with computers, 'cause if he was, he could probably just take a couple of clicks to send me a wipe virus and I wouldn't know about anything he'd just said. That's one of the reasons not all that many people have implants, that – not without the protection, anyway. I knew one guy, once, who was good enough to install the software to protect me from shit like that, but he got a grace chip a while back and these days he's not much good at anything except smiling, and when I had to go back to the lab to get my implant checked, they wiped the program he put in.

I get scared. I disconnect. I don't want him wiping that – I think he doesn't know how but suddenly I'm worried he _might_ – I don't want them deciding to wipe me or kill me just 'cause they decided they don't want me to work for them – I've worked for people who think like that before, more than once. You know: if we can't have you no-one can, you know too much, that kind of stuff. I mean, the boss is all secret enough that I sure as hell wouldn't put it past him. If they don't want me ...

I've got away from people like that before, though. And the rainy season's just started, so I've got this ideal escape route laid out already ... yeah.

I throw some stuff together in a bag – change of clothes, food, water, a knife ... and yeah, I'll take the gun, too, if I've got some gang after me it can't hurt to get the attention of the admin, too. Maybe I'm being too hasty, yeah, but it's better safe than sorry and to be honest I'd like a bit of a change of pace. This place was getting stuffy anyway.

I don't want to get anyone's attention so I don't go out of the door. The water levels are still too high to get around on the lower levels, anyway, and by the looks of things I'm gonna need the height, so I push open one of the skylights and climb out onto the roof. The sky's grey, and the roof's still a little damp. I'm glad I'm wearing my gloves.

The water's about up to the fourth floor, and if I zoom in I can see people making their way around through the cylinders. Some of 'em are underwater, too, but not all that many. I know I wouldn't chance that. Worse than the tunnels, 'cause you can see what's surrounding you. I'm not scared of rainfish, yeah, just of being trapped inside a little clear tube when you can see all what's around you ...

I lean back from the edge of the housing block. No-one's around on the roofs, at all – I can't see _anyone_ outside, and this is one of the tallest blocks round here. I don't blame them – everywhere smells of rain, and people are always worried it's gonna start up again even when there's no warnings.

I'd rather risk rain than get murdered, though. When I die, it's gonna be no-one's fault but mine.

I brace myself a moment, and then jump for the next rooftop. It's not far, but I can handle longer. Thank the labs for that, but I guess I'm rusty or something 'cause it takes me a while to work up the momentum to make the bigger leaps. But when I'm going I'm going and after a little while it's easy as anything, and the wind rushing past me is like some kind of drug, and I can even ignore that little headache around my other eye that I've been getting ever since those nightmares ...

I keep going 'til morning the next day, and I'm getting a little worn but I know I can go until night if I need to, and I reckon I do. But at eight fourteen I'm just landing on top of an empty outskirt housing block when there's that little blip in my other eye and then the message: RAIN WARNING.

Fuck.

It's the advance, so I've got a while – but it's, like, twenty minutes max if I'm lucky, yeah, and sometimes these things are kinda off. I've been rained on a couple of times before, but – only twice. Light. A few drops, and only on my clothes, before I could get inside ...

Even that burned, yeah.

So I don't wanna take my time or anything. I smash a skylight with my foot and jump in and never mind about the rats, just gotta get to the next room or whatever, where the skylight's closed. It's too high up for rats to be _living_ up here, if I'm remembering right – it's been a while since I lived this far from the city centre – but just in case, I find the middle room and open the skylights in all the others. That way, when it starts raining, yeah, if anything does come upstairs it'll have to go through a wet room to get to me.

I close all the doors, and take a look round the room. Still got a chair in – well, there's three, yeah, but only one's not broken. Someone's living room, looks like. It's started raining now, yeah, pummeling down on the roof like it's trying to bore through or something. Dunno how long it's gonna last, but I figure I might as well take the opportunity to get some rest or something, yeah. The chair's comfy enough, and I've got all the doors closed, and the rain's my barrier past all of them. Yeah. Safe as it's gonna get.

I set an alarm on my other eye to wake me up in eight hours, in case the rain's stopped by then or something, and let myself drift off.

-

-

I wake up at thirteen twenty-two, though, and I don't know why. It's still raining, yeah, and I don't have any messages. I look around the room – all the doors are still there and nothing's broken them, and everything's exactly where it was –

– And then I hear this thump behind me.

Someone's knocking on the door.


	5. 1:4

_Whoah, more than ten reviews already THAT ALARMS ME. THANK YOU, FOLKS! I'm .. seriously, really really glad people like this 8D THANKS._

**1.4**

I sit bolt upright, like, frozen, staring at the door.

And there's that thump again. THUMP. Who knocks like that? Seriously, yeah, it's like one step off from whacking into it with a battering ram or something, it sounds like. I stay right where I am – whatever – I mean, _who_ever the hell that is, they can't _know_ I'm in here if I don't make any noise, unless they got heat vision, yeah –

– Heat vision.

I don't use mine often enough for it to be second nature, yeah. Honestly, with the implant, I like to keep it that way. Not that it don't come in handy. Like now. I switch it on and squint my real eye shut, and the world goes black apart from the shifting mass of colour on the other side of the door.

It doesn't look human. Too big, yeah. Wrong shape, unless it was some kind of fucked-up hunchback twist, and even then the heat's wrong. Nothing made of meat comes up patterned like that. It's too cold, and where it's warm is uneven. Motors or something, yeah – something not quite like a regular robot, but ... I dunno.

One big cold arm lifts – and then _thump_. Another knock.

I get up, release the heat vision, open my real eye. I figure it's gotta know I'm here, yeah, as far as robots honestly know anything; don't know why, don't know how, don't know who the hell sent it – I'm better bothered with getting _away_ than finding out, except that it's still raining and all my damn exits are blocked off. Never fucking thought of that, did I? _Shit_. I was figuring on just holing up here until the rain stopped, thought the rain would stop anything coming in ... I didn't figure on any damn _robots_.

Be too late to hide. Nowhere to hide anywhere. It knows I'm here. So I let out this big sigh – and to be honest it's kinda shaky, not that I really want to admit it – and take a step towards the door, and yell, "Yeah, I'm in here, what d'you want?"

There's this moment of quiet, and then it speaks from behind the door and the voice is this ... it's fucking creepy, yeah. It's like ... it's low and gruff and evil, and it sounds like rust. I'm still saying 'it'. The voice is male if it's anything, but it's not the kind of voice you wanna call human, yeah.

"Open the door."

I stare at the door, tense all over. "No. Who are you?"

It replies, immediately. "Open the door, Deidara."

It's almost familiar. There's something, something I can't grab, that's familiar, but maybe I just think that 'cause it says my name, and that's freaking me out enough that I don't stop to think very long about what it is about it that's pulling on my memory.

"How d'you know my name? I know you're a robot, yeah. Who sent you?"

It laughs. "Are you going to open this door or not?"

I don't reply, and apparently that's enough for it 'cause then there's this crash and this blade drives through the door – clean through it, lock and everything. As soon as it stops moving so fast I can see it's not really a blade as much as it's like a spike, a sharp end to this long, jointed thing that's making bits out of the door. It just falls inwards, and the robot steps in.

It's like a tank, some freakish wrong-looking tank with four legs. The front ones are arms, but it's walking on them even though they're uneven – one of them's this huge shining reinforced thing with these seams in the metal where you can tell something's gonna push out or something, weapons, probably, and the other one .. just looks too real. Like a human arm. Not quite, it'd look wrong on a human, but on this, yeah, it looks too real.

Its fake face is scowling, like it can't really do anything else or something, yeah, but the weird hinged mouth is sort of twisting into some kind of nasty smirk. I want to leave out the skylight and make a run for it, but I can still hear the rain pounding on the roof and like hell I want my skin burnt off. Not when I don't know what the hell is with this machine, yeah. So I only take one step away from it, and glare at it, for all that's worth if it can tell human expressions, and I'm about to ask it what it wants when it interrupts me:

"You'll come with me."

I stare. "No. What if I don't wanna?"

"You don't get a choice, brat." It takes another step into the room, knuckling, like a gorilla. Doesn't make it look stupid, though, yeah. Something about the way it's looking at me is like it thinks it's smarter than me. And the way it talks. Brat? Who says _brat_? Somewhere its programmers are probably laughing or something.

"Oh yeah?" I want to step back as it steps towards me, but man, I got nothing. This room's too small. I got a few little bombs up my arm, but this close range, they'd take me out too, and I've got called hasty before, but I'm not stupid. "Come with you where? You're rainproof, yeah? Well I'm not. You wanna drag me through the rain there'll be nothing left to come with you when you're done, yeah, and I know this place is too old for a tunnels exit –"

"We will wait," it says, "Until the rain stops." It sounds pissed off. Really pissed off. "You weren't planning on going anywhere, were you?"

"You broke the door."

"You weren't opening it."

"What about rats?"

It gives me a withering look. Figures the face is pretty flexible, or something. "Can't you handle rats?"

"Hey! Just 'cause you've got a built in rocket launcher and machine guns or whatever, yeah –"

"Tch. Perhaps you'd be better off dead after all, if you can't even cope with _rats_."

"Hey –"

"Don't get your _knickers_ in a twist. My orders are to retrieve you in one piece."

Knickers. Nice. I scowl at it. "Yeah? What's that, first law or second, 'cause –"

"Asimov can go fuck himself," it says, deadpan.

I just raise my eyebrow and start to sort of edge back towards the chair. This one robot I used to know a couple of years back used to lock into emergency programming whenever anyone made any sudden movements. It was some sort of error or something, and this one looks in better nick than that, yeah, but old habits die hard, I guess. It watches me, but it doesn't stop me or say anything, so I sit down. Don't take my eye off it, though.

So. Can't go anywhere, with the rain. By the sounds of it this thing isn't gonna crump me, yeah, even if it is an illegal robot, but it's still standing right by the door. I can see past it, to the room behind, and the skylight's .. gone. There's just this hole in the ceiling – where it must have come in, I guess. It's pretty big, but then so is the robot, yeah. I reckon I'm faster than it is ... so once the rain lets up, I reckon I can make a go of a dash through the roof ...

... I'm looking at the hole still and I don't reckon it's stupid, yeah, so I glare at the robot and make an excuse.

"It's cold in here now, yeah. Why'd you have to leave a bloody great hole in the ceiling like that and then break the door down too?"

It rolls its eyes – and every time something like that happens I swear it kinda surprises me, 'cause you don't expect something that basically looks like a tank with a face to have the programming to do that kind of facial emotional stuff, never mind having a face that can move that much. "Can't stand that, either?" It makes a sort of tutting noise, but it sounds a bit mechanical. "Kisame was really recommending you _heartily_, you know, I expected better."

"Yeah, well – wait, you know Kisame?"

it stares at me like it wants to laugh, or that's what it looks like, but its voice is still deadpan, annoyed. "You really are monumentally stupid, aren't you? Of course I know Kisame." It gives me this long stare, like, scrutinising. "I'm from Akatsuki."

"You're from what?"

"Akatsuki," it says again, and I can hear it means I should know what it's talking about. "You've been working for us for the last few months, idiot."

Shit. Holy fucking shit.

"Well no-one ever told me a _name_, yeah. Stuff like this, you don't ask!"

"Then you're an idiot."

I glare at it. This is – fuck. This so many kinds of not good, yeah. They found me. They fucking found me, they – "How?"

"What?"

"How the hell did you find me?"

It pauses, looking at me like it's trying to decide whether to tell me or not, and then says, "Spyware."

"You gave me fucking _spyware_?! You _fuckers –_"

"I can remove it. If you come with me."

Oh, this is fucking _brilliant_. No wonder I was getting nightmares, yeah. No wonder my head hurt. Fucking spyware! "Jah, what's your error?! I don't want any of this full-time employment shit, I just want to make my _art_, yeah –"

"You don't have a choice," it snaps.

"Yeah? You said your orders were to bring me back in one piece, yeah. That's first law _and_ second law, and even if you do have some kind of circuit malfunction –"

And that's when its tail slams me into the wall. I thought it was just a spike on the end, but it figures it must have opened out or something into some kind of pincer thing, 'cause it's pinning me to the wall either side. I want to struggle or something but there's these _needles_ on the inside of each of the spikes and from the way they're glistening I really, really don't want a scratch from one of them, yeah.

"Do not assume I have any obligation to treat you pleasantly, brat. My orders are to bring you back in one piece – _ideally_. If you continue to _annoy_ me it will hardly be difficult to claim you fought back too hard for that to be an option." It narrows its eyes. "Touch one of these needles and you'll be out cold for twelve hours – and to be honest, for me, that would be far more tolerable than having to put up with you conscious."

I stare down at the metal pincers, and I'm kinda regretting I took my coat off when I got in here, yeah, 'cause my arms are bare apart from my gloves, and some of those needles are way too close.

"_Fine_," I say, scowling.

It doesn't reply. Doesn't let me down. Doesn't move.

"Let me go."

"I can't do that, Deidara. Wouldn't want you losing any limbs if you decide to get argumentative, would we?"

I clench my fists, grit the teeth in my hands. "So, what, you're just gonna pin me here 'til the rain stops? Yeah?"

"Yes."

"Fuck you!"

It makes this angry noise and scowls and then I feel these pinpricks pierce my arms, and last thing I'm aware of is it saying _something_ but I don't know what 'cause it's taking all the concentration I've got to stop everything I'm seeing from fuzzing off into black.

And I fail anyway.


	6. 1:5

_Sorry this is late coming – I'm travelling around the US staying with friends at the moment 8D I thought I'd have lots of opportunity to write stuff while I'm on trains and planes and stuff like that but for some reason I've only felt like SLEEPING ... besides which I've had to stop and make concessions for recent developments in the manga xD; ANYWAY, yeah, here's part five_

**1.5**

I wake up indoors but still kind of cold, and my joints all hurt like I've slept cramped up. It's a little bit before I remember what happened and I sit up and find out I'm on the floor of some dark room piled with boxes at the sides. There's no windows in here, but my other eye's telling me it's one forty-seven. Normally I'd check the sky first even though I know the implant's quicker, more precise, whatever. Maybe I'm just contrary or something, but it feels more honest, yeah? More real. And I don't like the implant.

The robot from before is hunched big across the room from me and watching me like a hawk, so I stare back at it, get to my feet – ugh, I'm all dizzy and my legs feel funny. Those needles ... yeah ...

"You bastard," I spit at it, and it makes this derisive sort of noise and narrows its eyes. Seriously expressive, considering. I'd forgotten about that. It's almost as good as an imitation-human android, and this thing is _not_ an imitation human. "You got a lot of reaction settings for a tank, yeah. You come like that or are you modified?"

It ... chuckles, I guess, and it's just as creepy as every other sound it makes. "Modified," it says, and sort of smirks. "Definitely modified."

"Yeah? Who's your programmer?"

"You wouldn't know them."

"Hey, don't be so sure about that, yeah." I figure tweaking like that's gotta be a big job, and I know a lot of the big names in underground electronics – not personally, wouldn't be able to afford that stuff for myself – otherwise I'd be well and totally clear of the lab, yeah – but you work in my line and you get to recognise them, you know?

"Akasuna no Sasori," it replies, pausing a moment first like it's not sure it's worth telling me. It says it like it's so, so sure I won't know. It's right, though, I don't.

I go over the words in my mouth, and then frown as my other eye picks up the curiosity and the lip movement and runs an automatic Google. I hate it doing shit like that without me telling it to, yeah. Still, the results are –

"Don't do that."

And the search page cuts out, just like that. Redirects me back to the implant homepage. What the _fuck_.

I must look really confused, 'cause it laughs. "Spyware," it says. "Or did you forget?"

"You said you'd get rid of it if I came with you, yeah!"

"I said I _could_. And you hardly came of your own volition, did you?"

I don't know what 'volition' means, so I wait for the dictionary to come up so I can close it 'cause I honestly don't _care_, but it doesn't. I stare at the robot. "You blocked my wifi."

"Yes, well done. Now tell me –"

"What the hell are you doing blocking my wifi?"

"I told you, I don't want you searching –"

"So just block that search, or Google, yeah?"

"You're clever, aren't you, Deidara? You'd find a way round it if I gave you the opportunity."

I scowl at it. "Yeah, well, it's not like I need internet access to read the 404 in your _brain_."

"Oh, lol, very funny. If you don't watch your tongue I'll paralyse it." It gives a little swish of its ... tail, I guess. It comes out of the middle of its back, but that's what it's like. A tail, yeah, like a scorpion's – Oh. Sasori, huh? Programmer was full of himself, then. Poison like a scorpion's, too, and I'm kind of reckoning it's got some kind of paralysing dose in some needle in it somewhere, yeah. It ignores the look I'm giving it, which is the kind that could probably kill someone if I had the right twist, and says, "You mentioned art, before." All of a sudden the tone of its horrible voice is, like ... actually _curious_. Like it's interested in anything I have to say. At all. "Tell me – what does a hired explosives expert want with _art_?"

I swear to Jah I can't do anything except stare. The way it says _art_, yeah, it's like it knows. Like it knows art, like it knows how art consumes you, like it knows art is everything. You can't just _program_ that. You _can't_. Of all the things to write a machine to _fake_ –

It raises its eyebrow. "What?"

"_Who programmed you_?"

"I told you."

"You gave me a _name_, yeah. Like hell I know who _Akasuna no Sasori _is –"

"If you deserved to know, you would recognise that name."

"Oh give me a break, yeah –"

"If you don't recognise the name –"

"I don't care about the name! want to know how the hell – _why_ the hell –anyone programmed _art_ into a _machine_!"

It looks at me all flat. Sort of amused. Jah but that's annoying. "You're irritatingly persistent, and this is getting tiring," it says in a short sort of voice, "_I_ am Akasuna no Sasori."

"... What?"

"I'm not repeating myself, brat. I'm getting sick of your assumption that my thoughts are the work of some _programmer_." I don't reply to it. I'm still trying to process what it's saying. It carries on, "I was as much flesh and blood as you were, once."

_Fuck_.

It – _he_ – self-modified? What kind of sick bastard _does_ something like that to himself? Turns himself into ... that? I mean ... I have trouble thinking about how anyone would voluntarily get an implant, yeah? That's bad enough – but _this_?

I'm not gonna ask why, though. I've kind of got the feeling I don't want to know.

"You still haven't answered my question."

"What?" I can't even remember, yeah. I'm stuck on thinking _what the fuck_, and I can't think of what we were saying before. It – no, _he_, because somewhere in all that it's still _human_ – Zion. I'm staring. My brain throws up the creepy implant kid on the Tunnels, and there's something there nagging at me but then I get interrupted before I can think about it any more.

"Art. What would someone like you know about it?"

I stare more, because that's the most hypocritical question I've ever heard from anyone, ever. "What would someone like _you_ know about it? What kind of _artist_ –"

"A superb one." No humility at all. Maybe he is an artist. "This," and he uses the creepy human-looking arm for the first time I've seen – and Jah, that must _be_ a human arm after all – to gesture to himself. "This is my art."

"Robotics?"

"Yes."

"You telling me there's _art_ in ... metal and little _squares_?" I actually laugh. This is fucking _absurd_. "That's not art, it's ... mechanics. Mechanics and _ruining_, yeah."

"Ruining?" It – no, he, it's a he, but I can't get used to that – raises an eyebrow. "The human body is in the constant process of being _ruined_. It decays. It is _mortal_." He says that word like it's disgusting, and takes a pause like he needs to get over having had to say it, and then he smiles this little self-satisfied smile. "But not me. I am forever."

I shake my head, slowly. "Nothing lasts forever."

"True _beauty_ is eternal beauty. _That_ is art."

Holy crap. This guy is on some serious, scary trip. "You call that _beauty_? I swear to Jah, all the ugly twists I've seen, yeah, and I've seen a lot, none of them's ever been as ugly as you."

I'm not expecting the tail to come at me, but I _see_ it coming point four seconds soon enough and this time I'm smart to it enough to dodge.

"You're blind, brat." He pulls the metal out of the floor and reels it in, kind of thing, and I hang back all tense. But I'm not gonna back down, yeah.

"No. _Real_ beauty – real _art_ – is temporary, yeah. It doesn't last – it's the instant where something's most perfect, most beautiful ... that's what art is, making that moment. An explosion –"

"You don't honestly mean to say that you think your job is art."

I glare. "Art is a _bang_."

There's silence, then. I'm waiting for him to reply. He doesn't – or maybe he's about to, or maybe I'm about to, but either way neither of us gets to, because someone interrupts from the doorway.

"Hey, Sasori, he awake yet?"

I honestly didn't think I was gonna be so happy to hear Kisame's stupid voice this soon, yeah, and I'm only just starting to remember I was running _away_ from him ... and this whole business. Well, looks like _that_ failed bad. Kisame's probably hella amused, yeah – but it figures when I look at him he's not so much. In fact he's kinda frowning.

"Deidara, what the hell were you thinking taking off like that, huh?"

"You said they were gonna kill me, yeah!"

He rolls his eyes, and I can hear Sasori making this derisive snort but I'm not paying him any attention. "Not if we took you on."

I'd take a moment to wonder about the 'we', but I'm too annoyed, so I just snap, "Well 'scuse me for not wanting to risk getting crumped by some selfish employers."

Kisame shrugs sort of apologetic. "You don't run away from Akatsuki, Deidara."

I glare. "I did."

"And look how far that got you," Sasori cuts in, a little bit amused, mostly annoyed. I glare harder at him.

"So what, now I get killed?"

"Aw, come on," Kisame says. "The Leader would be mad to bin you –"

"Hardly," Sasori interrupts flatly. "He's an argumentative, cocky, deluded brat and I'd sooner kill him than work with him."

"He'll be useful." That's a new voice, that one, and I don't recognise it and I'm kind of glad I don't. It's the kind of voice that doesn't care about _anything_, yeah. The kind of voice that doesn't say anything except when it totally needs to, so you don't notice its owner until he's already behind you.

Well, actually he's behind Kisame, but I never saw him come in. I recognise his face, yeah. He's the guy Kisame said was his colleague, before: dark hair, bit taller than me; face like an android, eyes like ... eyes like I don't know.

He doesn't say anything else.

For all I know he was here the whole time.

"Itachi-san is right," Kisame says, and it's like he thinks that 'cause this Itachi guy's said it, Sasori has to agree. "The Leader wants him on board."

Sasori maked an annoyed huffing sort of noise. "I should have killed him bringing him back here and pretended I'd had no choice."

Kisame laughs. He's got a weird laugh, but it's the familiar kind of weird, yeah. I'm used to it so I like it. "You'd beat Kakuzu's record, then. He's never killed one of his partners before he's even started working with them yet."

"Oh god," Sasori mutters. "Don't remind me I'm going to have to –"

"Wait, wait. What? Partners? I have to _work_ with this bastard? I _refuse_, yeah. I'm not joining your stupid Akatsuki thing."

"You don't get a choice." Kisame sighs. "Leader's decided."

And then Itachi steps forward and shakes his head and says, "I'll deal with this."

There's this worried sort of look on Kisame's face then. If I didn't know better I'd say I didn't think he had anything to be worried about, 'cause this guy's not all that, you know? I mean, to look at. Especially next to Kisame – Kisame's one of the strongest guys I know, and this Itachi's like half his height or something, yeah, kinda lean, but he looks like a girl. Like, seriously, not just the way some people make out like I do because of my hair, yeah? He's all eyelashes and lips and prettiness – but there's something about him that makes my hair stand on end. Like you could shank him through and he wouldn't react. Like if you fought him 'til he was bleeding his life out, he'd still just stand there the same, _blank_, waiting for you to do something that'd make him flinch except you never ever could. It's in the way he stands and the look on his face, but mostly in his eyes, yeah. There is something seriously ab about his eyes. They look flat and black and dead.

But while I'm staring at them they shift into this mad spinning red, spinning like it's drilling into my head. It almost _hurts_.

And I can't look away.


	7. 1:6

**1.6**

Everything's darker. Kisame's gone and so is Sasori, it's just me standing there with Itachi in front of me and this ache in the left side of my head like something's pressing into my brain with a million tiny _drills_. I'm trying to look at Itachi but I sort of can't and I can only see out of my other eye even though using it hurts and it won't focus properly except on those damn _eyes_ – they're still spinning, like _hell _– and then I realise everything's spinning, everything's red, behind me, above me, right in front of me ... behind Itachi, bright spinning red darkness, everywhere.

I'd think I'd want to be sick, yeah, except I don't. There's something in my head saying, _yes_. There's something in my head saying this is some kind of perfect, and I'm finding I want to, like ... _grasp_ this, whatever it is, and if I could just understand it I'd see ... yeah ...

I can't, but ... I'm so close to _getting_ it, so close to seeing that this ... that ...

"This is art," I'm hearing myself saying, and I think, _yes_. I think. it has to be. In the spinning and the uncertainty and the nothing, that's reassuring and disturbing all at once but at least it's _something_, and for a moment I want to cling to it.

And then I see his face and it's so _blank_ and it _does not give a damn_ and it's like I've suddenly realised something and the seeing is gone and the next moment the spinning is gone and I can _see_ properly again, and I'm fucking _exhausted_, but I manage to hiss out, "_No_ – _That wasn't art_."

Itachi's still in front of me and he still looks like he stepped straight out of some kind of uncaring hell where everyone's just as apathetic as he is, and I'm sort of aware Kisame's behind him and Sasori's off to the side somewhere but I can't bring myself to look at them, yeah. I just narrow my eyes and grit my teeth and catch my breath and glare at him.

"That wasn't fucking art and I'm not joining your fucking gang or whatever, yeah."

I can hear Sasori making this annoyed noise like he's about to talk, but Itachi cuts him off.

"I'll fight you," he says, and he doesn't even sound like he's the kind of guy who'd _enjoy _it – it's just like he thinks it might be _necessary_ or something, yeah, and he doesn't give a shit one way or the other.

It's then I decide that I hate him.

"If I win, you'll join."

He doesn't say what happens if I win. Arrogant _fucker_ ...

... but he's right. If he can do that ... I can't. If he does that to me again, yeah ... I know I can't win.

But I tense up my arm anyway, gagging in my hand as I choke out the little bomb from my left throat. This room's pretty big, the boxes are a little bit of cover, and if I'm far back enough I can get away with just being hurt. Be worth it, yeah, to take this bastard out. I start backing away, to give the blast room, hoping Itachi's not gonna figure what I'm doing too soon.

In retrospect the mistake I make is looking at his face to see if he figured or not, yeah, cause his eyes are spinning again and I think the bomb went off but it's dark, and probably if they had the floor would've fallen through. I don't think the floor's fallen through. It might have. I'm not really sure of anything all of a sudden, except that I can see his eyes again, and it's like this spinning is everything there is.

Something hurts. I don't know anything. My right eye is blind again, and everything I can feel or see or do is focussed on the implant in my head. It's like I am the implant and the rest of me is all gone and that's the most horrible thought in the whole damn world, ever – especially when the clock in it's stopped, just a row of zeros, and when I try to reach out for the internet or anything that would let me into something _outside_, I can't, I'm blocked, it's like trying to break through this burning fiery wall

But I keep trying. I keep trying and trying even though I don't even know what I'm trying to do and even though it's not working just because if I don't do anything then the spinning and the darkness and the red will just close in on me and I can't think of anything worse than that even though I don't know what would happen so I keep trying and trying but I'm not getting anywhere and it feels like _hours_ or days Jah knows I can't tell any more ... and then suddenly it's light again and they're all standing above me ... above me? I've fallen. I'm on my knees.

_Shit_.

I get to my feet but it's way more effort than it should be, yeah. I'm totally fucking drained. I want to fall down again but they're all _looking_ at me and like hell ... Iike fucking hell ...

I'm not gonna say I passed out, 'cause I didn't. Years since I last passed out, yeah. But there's like a moment or two where I actually just don't have a clue what's going on – like I'm falling or something, except I'm not, I just can't tell where my feet are, and I don't have enough eyes to be able to see anything. That doesn't make any sense but right now nothing really does. I'm reeling. I can hear their voices, the others, but I can't tell what they're saying. Kisame sounds a little bit worried. Stupid bastard.

But then Itachi's voice cuts in clear as you like: "You lose."

And suddenly everything snaps back to making sense. I can see everyone again, feel my feet on the ground. Normal ...

Well, nearly – it's been years since I _lost _to anyone, yeah. But there's this Itachi, not a scratch on his pretty pretty face, looking at me like _he_ ain't got a clue what their boss wants with me, and here's me, basically froze to the spot, yeah, kinda shaking and I can't move.

"What the hell was that," I say, and it's the kind of talking where you hear yourself saying it and you can't really remember when you decided to say it.

"My eyes," is all Itachi says. "The Mangekyou Sharingan."

I tell you what, yeah – that means basically _nothing_ to me. Nothing at all except one day I'm gonna beat it, yeah. Get him back for that. Yeah. I tell him so and the look he gives me is like the kind where you get the feeling if it was anyone else he'd be laughing, but _he doesn't do that_. He barely arches one of his thin black eyebrows like to say 'yeah, right', and I'm _glad_ he didn't laugh, 'cause I think if he laughed hell would open up right under him and everyone in the world would go mad.

More mad, anyway. I don't figure most people've got their right thoughts about them in this world, yeah.

Sasori laughs, though, his grating grumbly _superior_ laugh. I want to kick him in his stupid would-be robot face, but I can't get it together to move my legs properly still, so I just glare at him. He narrows his eyes back at me, and spits out words. "Brat," he says, derisive as hell, and then looks over at Itachi and Kisame. Kisame's a little behind Itachi now. It ought to, like, _dwarf_ him, yeah, make him look little and weak, but it actually makes him look even more incriminating. Intimidating. That one. Whatever. Anyway Sasori's saying, "This is absurd. What possible use is this _boy_ going to be –"

"He's older than Itachi was, when he joined," Kisame points out.

"_Barely_," Sasori replies. I wonder how old Itachi is, then, 'cause I coulda sworn he didn't look much older than me if he looked older than me at all. He does have these two like _wrinkles _on his face, under his eyes, though, and I'm thinking maybe he's surgically preserved or something.

"Still older," says Kisame. "You never complained about Itachi."

"That's because Itachi isn't an unskilled brat with a mouth big enough to put both his feet in it at once –"

"Hey!" I really, _really_ don't like Sasori. I mean, I knew I didn't already, but every time he opens his metal mouth I hate him more. "Shut the hell up, yeah. I'm _plenty_ skilled –"

"Oh, _please_, brat. You were owned. We all saw it."

"Stop calling me that! Anyway I _gotta_ be good if your ... _Akatsuki_ thing wants me, yeah?"

Sasori humphs. "Yes, well," he grumbles, "I'm beginning to question the Leader's judgement."

I grin, 'cause I've blatantly won, yeah, but then all three of them like _hesitate_ a moment, like they're all reacting to the same thing at the same time. Itachi's the first one to speak, and it's like to someone who's not there or something.

"Yes. He is here." A pause. "No."

There's another pause, and then Kisame grins and says, "Oh, yeah. Like a house on fire," and Sasori makes this grumbling noise – there's silence and then he does it again, harsher, angry. Kisame looks from me to Sasori and back again and sort of shrugs, and then they all mutter 'yes, sir'. It's really fucking creepy, yeah.

For a moment Kisame looks about to say something, but Itachi gets there first. I wish he hadn't. He says, "Sasori, stay here with him –" before Sasori cuts him off.

"I know what the Leader said, Itachi."

Itachi looks at him like he's marking down Sasori in a little book of people who have ever defied him who he's going to kill insignificantly at some point in the future, and then just turns and leaves. The door swishes open for him, and Kisame goes behind him – he glances back at me a moment but he doesn't say anything, yeah. He just leaves.

"What the hell was that?" I don't wait for the door to shut properly. I'm kind of hoping Kisame and Itachi _will_ hear. "What –"

"That was the Leader of the Akatsuki, brat." He sounds as annoyed as I do more or less. "We're to go to a meeting tomorrow morning. In the meantime ..." He stops here, just to pause to look more annoyed or something, and then goes on, like he's telling me he's going to have to get both his legs amputated or something (by the looks of him he's already been there, though), "In the meantime he wants us to stay here and ... _settle our differences_." I can pretty much hear the italics. I don't think I ever heard anyone say anything that scornly, yeah.

"What are you talking about? I didn't hear anything, yeah."

Sasori gives me this annoyed look that's kind of baffled, actually baffled, at the same time. "You've got an implant, haven't you?" he says, like he's talking to someone retarded. "Surely you're familiar with instant messaging –"

"Oh shut _up_, 'course I am –"

"Then I don't see what has you so confused. Or are you just being wilfully contrary?"

"What I _mean_ is, I know Kisame hasn't got any implants, yeah! Or Itachi – I never got any reading off him, my other eye –"

"Obviously isn't as reliable as you thought it was," he interrupts. Jah, he's smug! I want to ram a C4 down his stupid steel throat. I would if I could. Seriously, the only thing stopping me from trying right now is that damn Sharingan thing left me so weak ... Ugh, The battery's low on my other eye, too, I figure all of a sudden, and I glare at Sasori.

"There's nothing wrong with it, yeah. It works fine."

Never mind the checkup. Never mind the labs.

"Well, obviously not: that's four implants you failed to pick up."

"Shut up. It's fine."

Sasori rolls his eyes. "You're trying my patience, brat."

"If they've got implants, tell me where they are, yeah."

One of his weird-looking eyebrows arches. "Oh, no. If your implant's _fine_ it ought to be able to detect them. Perhaps I'm wrong." I open my mouth to snap something at him, I don't even know what when I'm opening my mouth, but he stops me. "Or perhaps," he says, smirking, "you just need to look _harder _ next time. Hmm?"

I glare at him. Stupid smug bastard. I bet he's running Mac.

We don't talk to each other for a while. Mostly I just can't be fucked with trying to talk to him, and he obviously doesn't give a damn about it either. It's so damn' _boring_, though, yeah ... I pull the bomb I choked up earlier out of my pocket, after a while, and toss it in the air, catch it, toss it, catch it.

Sasori pays attention, then. He fixes me with this suspicious look and says, in this stern voice that makes me think too much of how the doctors back in the labs talked when they wanted you to do what they were saying, "Isn't that dangerous?"

I look up from the beetle. "What?"

"That ... thing. You were going to use it against Itachi. It's an _explosive_, you idiot. What do you think you're doing?"

I grin then – heck, I laugh. He doesn't look like he thinks it's all that funny, so I tell him, "It's dried out. It needs moisture, yeah. I gotta lick it for it to work."

He narrows his eyes. "That's ridiculous. I never saw you _lick_ it."

I just grin wider at that, yeah – he must not have seen me spit it out in the first place. I hold my hands up, grinning with those mouths too, and open them and stick my tongues out at him. He pulls a surprised, disgusted face, which is really really satisfying. He wasn't expecting that, yeah. Stupid bastard.

"You're modified," he says.

I roll my eye. "Well, _duh_."

"Hah. And here I thought you were just a pyromaniac nutjob who'd got lucky with an implant." He tilts his head, curious but his voice is mocking me. "Labs or back street surgeon?"

I shrug. "Labs. Beta. 'Bout ten years back, yeah."

"Ten years?" He narrows his eyes, peering at me suspiciously. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

He looks a little surprised again there. I dunno if it's 'cause he thought I looked older than that or 'cause he didn't think any of the labs took volunteers that young. I reckon it's the latter, yeah, 'cause most of the voluntary ones don't. Kisame doesn't talk about it much but I know he didn't go into any labs 'til he was like twenty or something, yeah.

Anyway Sasori wipes the surprise and just says, "Seventeen? You could have fooled me. I've met fifteen-year-olds more mature than you."

I glare at him. "Yeah? How old are you, anyway?"

"That's none of your business, brat."

"Hey! I told you how old _I_ was, yeah –"

"You chose to answer. I don't."

"Why, you embarrassed of being a crusty old man or what?"

He makes this horrible snort of laughter that sounds like someone dragging a dead rat across rusty corrugated iron. "It's none of your business."

"It's not like anybody'd be able to tell, yeah."

"I said it's none of your business. This discussion ends here."

"Yeah, well –"

"Deidara." In the same breath he says my name he's got the tip of that long jointy scorpion-tail like a couple of millimeters from my throat.

".. What."

"For his own reasons, whatever they might be, the Leader has seen fit to make you my partner as member of this organisation, and partner you might be but I would like to make one thing clear: you are not my equal. I am your superior. You are my subordinate. You will take my instruction and you will do as you are told." He fixes me with this stern, stern look and it's like I'm back in the labs again, getting the rules laid down to me while they branded the back of my neck. "Is that understood?"

I can hear his voice echoing with the doctors'.

All I can do is nod.

Sasori narrows his eyes, lowers the tail. "Good boy."


	8. FIRST INTERLUDE: NARUTO

_It's dark. Coupled with the damp of the last rain, that's enough to keep people off the roofs – they'll all be down the crowded tunnels, and one of them likes it down there, with the constant distant rumbling of machinery and trains, but the other one wants to feel the wind ruffle his hair in spiralling eddies through the night. It's impossible to shine in the tunnels, pressed up against a million people who don't care what you could become until you've shown them, and even then ..._

_But when he's up here on the rooftops, he feels like all the world is his to see, and with the lights of the towerblocks glimmering up through the floodwater, he feels like all the world is looking back – like he's something amazing and everyone else must know it._

_There's no-one there to know it; no-one to see him shine, however much he might wish it. But even with Number Nine clicking away in his spine and his skull and his stomach, here he feels alive._


	9. 2:1

_Sorry for the HUGE WAIT with this - I got it into my head that I was going to do illustrations for each one of the previous chapters and illustrate every new one as it came along, but it ended up holding me back way too much SORRY. ANYWAY I was also majorly unhappy with how some things were panning out, but I've made some minor edits to past chapters that have me much happier with things now._

_ANYWAY. Seventh chapter – first chapter of PART TWO. Bluescreen will be in four parts, and I think this second section might be the longest, but you never know. _

**2.1**

This is gonna be well good, yeah. It's better than anything I've ever put together before. It's _inspired_. It'll take the target to bits in one point three seconds and all that's gonna be left is a crater and fire. _Obliteration_.

Sasori said it was overkill, when I was working on it and I told him how it was gonna work. I told him there's no such thing as overkill when it's art, and he just laughed his horrible rusty laugh. I think he understands, though, cause he's the same way with his robot stuff. A couple of weeks ago he finished something for a job he'd been given like months ago, and he'd built this robot specially for it. It was supposed to be for some espionage thing or something, just to record some meeting or whatever – and it was the slickest thing you ever saw, yeah, any big cyber company would kill to employ him, I bet – but it had all this built-in extra stuff like ... like a blowtorch and poison gas and darts and guns and shit. I asked him if it needed all that and he said probably not but it never hurts to be _prepared_. He says that, but I think he just likes putting like eighty more weapons than anything needs on everything he makes.

Half the time the jobs he gets he doesn't actually go on all the way, just goes to a little way off and sends a robot depending on which one does the job best or whatever. They're remote-controlled or something, yeah? Sometimes I have to go with the robot. I don't really mind that much, really. Somehow his voice sounds less awful when it's crackling out of speakers, yeah, like that's how it's supposed to be. From a distance. Yeah? He doesn't always do that, though. This time he's with me – well, not really _with_ me cause I'm waiting outside. He's in there – this lab warehouse a little way south of Fougere – nicking something for the Leader – we're supposed to call him that, yeah, no-one will tell me what his name is or anything and I _still_ haven't seen him IRL, he wasn't even there when they stuck the goddamn implant in my arm for the communications shit. I said I don't need it, I got an implant, but Kisame says like this is some special one or something and even Sasori has one and he's like made of implants ... but anyway, yeah, I'm waiting outside waiting to wipe the warehouse flat, but obviously I gotta wait for him to get out of there first, yeah? He's taking a while so I message him cause I don't like how the Akatsuki implant works.

"You done yet or what?"

He doesn't reply right away, and then when he does it's just "STFU". I guess he's busy or something. If that warehouse is anything like the one from the labs I was in it's probably pretty guarded, yeah, and this one's way bigger. But I've seen him fight, yeah? It's kind of amazing. Whatever he said, he must've really been trying not to hurt me when he got me after all, 'cause when he actually wants to kill something it's dead just like that. It's well banging how he moves all metal shifting and way faster than anything that heavy should be, yeah, raps, and I _hate_ robots but it's just, like ... Jah. Wow. I kind of wish I was in there to watch whatever it is that has him busy enough to just STFU me, yeah, but I'm stuck out here waiting for him. He bitches about waiting for shit all the time and I kind of know how he feels but when I think about the explosion that's coming, the time building up to it isn't so bad. Anticipation's all part of it, yeah? It's not the moment, but it makes the moment better.

So I wait. It's a good fifteen minutes or something, yeah. I don't see him leave the building straight off but he IMs me – he usually does that, too; I reckon it's cause he didn't _make_ the Akatsuki implant, and all the other metal shit in him he did. He's like that, yeah. Proud.

"I'm out. Set it off when I say."

I grin. I wouldn't, 'cause the bastard's telling me what to do like I don't know _again_ when he could've just waited til he was clear and then said he was, yeah, but this close to setting it off I can't help grinning, so I don't argue with him, just message back "Yes, _Master_", and wait.

The whole 'Master' thing started a few weeks back. He's bossy as hell, yeah? Acts like just cause he's technically my superior or whatever means everything he says goes. Problem is he's like made of metal and he's got built-in poison knives and guns and shit, and it's like, what am I gonna do, gnaw him to death in four places at once? So basically whatever he says _does_ go. But only cause he makes me, yeah. And you can tell what he really wants is for someone to call him 'Master' and mean it, yeah, so I make sure he knows I don't mean it every time he gets up himself like that, just to remind him the only reason he's in charge is cause I'm not the one who built a rocket launcher into my own back. Because I know it pisses him off. Lots pisses him off, but that pisses him off a _lot_. I think he takes his time messaging me again on purpose 'cause of it, yeah, but I don't mind. Point is he does eventually, and I don't reply, just click the button, and ... bang.

Every single explosion is its own perfect blast of ... of beauty, yeah, but there's something really _satisfying_ about taking a lab to bits. It's not the one that I was in – fucked if I'm going anywhere near that place – but ... any lab, yeah. Seeing it burn down ...

... I feel guilty then, though, 'cause I realise the reason I'm staring like it's the only thing that ever happened in the world isn't 'cause of the art. It's, like, revenge or whatever, yeah. It isn't right. I'm so skewed about it I don't notice Sasori coming until he's right over by me, but when I do, he doesn't give me time to think about stuff much longer, just snaps at me and swishes his tail around my feet to get me moving, and suddenly I'm back and I can hear the broken alarm sputtering in the wreckage of the lab.

"What are you doing standing there like that?" (I don't think I'm ever gonna get used to Sasori's voice. Not just cause it sounds like an old man dying in a scrap metal heap, but there's still something in the way he talks that I've heard somewhere else, but I can't work it out. I don't think about it very _long_ ever, but it nags at me practically every time he speaks.) "Come on, you idiot."

We run. He's faster fighting than running, and I move quicker than him, but he hasn't got muscles; he doesn't get tired. We're gonna have to leg it all zig-zag across the mountains cause of the floodwater until we can get to some tunnels, and if we go the way we came it's gonna take us a good while to get to the next hole, yeah. It was easy on the way here, dry, but the clouds are gathering now. I dunno if he pays attention to that stuff or not, yeah. I don't think he does notice til he sees me looking up.

"We have time," he says. I frown, cause I'm not too sure, and go to check the weatherforecast.

It's weird. It always pissed me off so much how as soon as I started wondering about something my implant would google it automatically or open up wiki or something, so when Sasori _finally_ took the spyware off it I got him to stop it doing that, too. But I guess I was used to it or something cause it's really weird having it not do that any more. I mean, I had three years to get used to it, yeah? And looking back I guess it was kinda handy, meant I could just let it do that while I was doing something else, yeah, but ... I like it better having control and stuff. Better than like having something else in my head telling me what to do. Yeah.

So I go to the bookmarked weatherforecast myself and –

"There's no rain warning," Sasori cuts in, like point three seconds before the page finishes loading – the internet's slow out here. I frown at him. Sometimes I wonder if he left the spyware in, yeah. I say so. He snorts. "No. You're just predictable. Come on."

I look back at him all annoyed – and then I realise he's not carrying anything.

"Hey."

"What?"

"I thought you were stealing something from in there, yeah. Where is it?"

"I've got it."

"Where?"

"It's not very big," he says, looking at me like to say if I ask again he'll shank me.

I figure it must have just been data or something, so he could've just downloaded it or whatever, but I don't get why he didn't just say so. I'm not gonna ask, though, cause he's giving me that "piss me off any more and I'll sedate you" look – and I don't mean that like fictionally ... uh, figuratively or whatever, yeah, he does actually do that. I'm not kidding. Sometimes he doesn't even warn me or anything, just I'll be talking and he'll be sort of grumbling and then I feel a little pinprick and the next thing I know I'm waking up back at my place – not where I used to live back in Three Wizards, yeah, it's a different flat, nearer the base, up in Swannereich. None of my old stuff is in there, but I cope; if I send a list to base of the stuff I need to make my bombs, I get it. I don't even have to pay for it – I only gotta handle the bills and food and stuff, so considering that with the fact that I got a pay rise when they took me on I think it's a pretty good deal.

Apart from the fact that I have to work with this bastard, anyway. He's glaring at me, now, over his shoulder – he's really good at not looking where he's going, I guess it must be a robot thing – so I glare back all like "what" and he says, "Can't you go any faster?"

"What? We're making plenty good time, yeah."

"If you could stand floodwater we'd be making it better."

"Yeah, well, I can't, can I. Just cause _you're_ rainproof. Here, tell you what – I'll race you, yeah, back to the tunnels –"

He narrows his eyes. "_No_, Deidara. There's an advance."

"– What?"

"You heard me. You can check if you want."

"Hnn." I don't. I believe him – the clouds are all threatening and dark and I've been waiting for a warning the entire time we've been out here. You can practically feel the rainfish starting to gather under the surface, waiting for the rain. I think I can see the feelers of some of 'em sticking out of the water, but I might be imagining it. It's gonna rain, though. You can tell. We're far enough from anything that we're practically begging it, yeah – there's reasons no-one comes out this far in the rainy season. "So what. What are we gonna do."

He pauses, fixing me with this snooty no-nonsense look he's got that always makes me feel like he thinks he's talking to a five-year-old. "_I_ am going to find a way round this, and _you_ are either going to do what I say, or die." I open my mouth to reply, but he cuts me off. "Don't. I'm checking maps – if the erosion hasn't hit it too hard there should be a cave around here somewhere, or an overhang, at least – this way."

He sets off straight away, veering away from the course he'd set himself before, and I follow him. We keep tight to the side of this huge wall of rock, and it figures he's right – or the maps were, or whatever – there's this cave burrowing into the side of it. I don't reckon it's all that deep, but it's dark. But whatever, the clouds are rumbling, and it's shelter. I'm not complaining. Sasori shuffles under, too. I look at him all "what're _you_ sheltering for, Mr Rainproof?" and he snorts.

"Just because I can withstand rain doesn't mean that it's good for me."

I laugh. "What – takes off the chrome, yeah?"

He doesn't reply, but then I spot the first raindrop dot onto the rock outside, and after a moment or two anything else I might've wanted to say is drowned out by the patter and hiss of the rain.


	10. 2:2

**2.2**

It's been raining for like two hours or something, yeah. We've had to sort of edge to the back of the cave to keep from the stuff splashing in on us, cause it's pretty damn torrential. At this rate we're not gonna be able to leave the way we came, if the floodwater gets any deeper. Sasori says that's stupid, it's not going to get deeper by enough to cut off any of our escape routes or anything, but you never know, yeah?

"If it does, can I ride on your back?"

He doesn't reply, but I can feel the "that is a stupid question and I am not going to dignify it with a response" hanging in the air along with the burning smell of the rain.

It's this sorta thing I hate about jobs with him. Sometimes he just doesn't say anything for ages. I hate silence, especially when there's just this white noise rain droning around everywhere, but I think he likes it or something. I wonder what he does. I mean, near as I can see he's just staring into space, but his eyes've got that screensaver look to them like he's off doing something else, yeah, with his thoughts all zipping along wires and things. He's showing up on my contact list as online but you kind of expect him to be idle. He looks idle, yeah. And I'm bored.

"Hey ..."

He doesn't look at me, but you can tell his attention's snapped back to the outside world. I wonder how much time he spends there when he's on his own. I don't even know where he goes to be alone, yeah. It's hard to imagine something like him having a flat somewhere or something.

"How long d'you think the rain's gonna last?"

Sasori heaves a scrapy metal sigh, still staring out at the rain. "I don't know. It's too heavy for the forecast signals to reach us here, especially with the mountains in the way."

I huff, kicking at a loose rock. "I hate this."

He doesn't reply.

"Hey – at least this way no-one's gonna come after us, yeah."

"What?"

"From the lab."

He snorts. "There won't be anyone left alive in there."

"Well, you never know, yeah, the explosion might've missed someone," I say, but I'm grinning, cause he never says anything positive like that about my blasts. He's never impressed. Makes a change – he should be.

"Yes," he says, not looking round. "It probably did. But I gassed them all beforehand."

"... Oh." I deflate a little, frowning at the metal back of him. "Well ... well that might've missed someone, yeah."

"No."

"It might've."

"Unlike some people, Deidara, I am very thorough. I actually thought about the fact that removing the possibility of pursuit would make our escape easier rather than just babbling for weeks about how pretty the burning would look."

"... It was only two weeks."

"That's still weeks plural."

"Anyway it wasn't pretty, it was beautiful, yeah. Didn't you see it? It was one of the –"

"– Best you've ever done, stunning, amazing, blah blah I couldn't care less. Honestly, Deidara, one explosion is very much like the next, especially since you say this every single time –"

"Hey, not my fault I get better all the time, yeah."

I think he might be rolling his eyes. He doesn't look back, still, so I can't tell. Don't really blame him, yeah – his head's pretty small on all that metal, and once he's set down still I bet he's a bastard to shift. Whatever, he's not saying anything, so I wander over and lean on him. He's like just the right height, and it's not like he can feel it for it to be uncomfortable so I don't see as he'd need to have any problem with it. I know he's going to anyway, yeah, but I don't care, just grin as he fiiinally turns his head round to look at me, all glaring and pissy.

I'm all, "What?", but I think he can tell I'm just doing it for something to do cause he just huffs, "Brat", and looks back at the rain. Still raining hard. Not stopping any time soon.

I tch at him and turn away to scuff my boots against the rocks. This is gonna be a long rainfall.

-

-

It lets up like six hours later or something. It feels like forever. I spend some of it asleep against Sasori – I hate the hum he makes the whole time but he's warmer than the rocks, yeah. I think he laughs at me, but I'm too tired to care. When I wake up it's 'cause he's moved away and let me flop over on the floor. So I'm awake kinda quickly.

"– Ow! What the hell, yeah, you coulda broken my head –"

"And a great mind would have been lost to the world, I'm sure," he mutters.

I sit up, rubbing my head more than it feels bad even though I know it's not gonna make him care.

"It's stopped raining."

"I know," I say, but I don't notice the hiss of it has gone until after he says it. There's no clear sky to see, though, 'cause it's dark by now – twenty-one seventeen. Sasori's tiny lights are all clear against the darkness where he's standing at the mouth of the cave, yeah, this little spray of delicate that doesn't belong with the hulking metal mass of the rest of him. I dunno what they're for. Sometimes I've seen them different colours – they're yellow now – but they're never off.

"Come on, get up," he snaps, and he snakes his tail out towards me. I'm up before it gets to me, and he snorts and pulls it back, already leaving the cave into the dark. I follow him, pushing my hair out of my face so my other eye can make with the night vision. I can't remember the way we came, but I figure Sasori will know. He seems in a hurry – more than usual, I mean. I guess it's cause we spent so long waiting out the rain, yeah. He hates wasting time.

He doesn't even hurry me, just goes, quickly. And I follow.

He doesn't say a word to me the whole time. I try to start up conversation once or twice but it's like talking to an angry wall. He doesn't say anything or slow down or even look at me. So I'm relieved as hell when we finally hit the tunnels and I get on the train up to Swannereich.

I don't know where Sasori's going. I guess to base, to hand that thing over to the Leader, whatever it was? Him especially's gotta go there all weirdways, I guess, cause otherwise he'll draw attention or whatever. I dunno how he gets around without people noticing him all bulky and freaklooking. And I got no idea where he goes ever, like I said. I guess he's gotta live somewhere, yeah? I mean even if he doesn't sleep, cause I seriously don't reckon he sleeps ... but I guess he's got to recharge or something. But, like, he has to have somewhere to put his machinery together.

I just can't imagine anywhere being lived in by something like him.


	11. 2:3

**2.3**

So I'm down Peace Zone Central with Kisame, getting lunch and stuff, just catching up, yeah? Everything's all decked out with all the dry season stuff cause the rainy season's nearly over. It's been getting less and less all the last month; the one in Fougere when I was down there with Sasori was the last downpour that was really _heavy_, yeah. It rained a week ago and everyone's saying that's gonna be the last one. The floodwater's started to go down and everything, you can see the marks on the buildings.

"I like this time of year, yeah. It's like, everything going back to normal."

"Huh?" Kisame looks up from his sandwich. He's been complaining like it's got gristle in it or something, I reckon if he's gonna buy a sandwich from any of the big places up in Peace Zone he oughtta be _expecting_ gristle.

"I mean, like, all the ... dry season stuff, yeah? When the rainy season comes round it always feels weird, y'know? Even though it happens every year. Dry season's, like ... okay! Weird time over! Back to surface-dwelling, tiny mammals!"

Kisame smiles a little and shakes his head. "I don't know. It's always been the other way round for me."

I roll my eye. "Yeah, well, you're _waterproof_, yeah. 'Course you like the rainy season. You can go wherever you like." I take a bite of my sandwich. It _is_ kinda gristly, but y'know, what d'you expect? "I mean, even Sasori has to take shelter and stuff ..."

"He does?" Kisame raises his eyebrows. "I thought he was safe in there."

"Yeah, well, y'know." I shrug. "Maybe it takes off the shine or something. I dunno."

Kisame laughs, showing teeth. "I'm not totally waterproof, anyway. I can take being rained on, but ..."

"Yeah, well, that's more than I can."

I half expect him to say something like, maybe you should've stayed in the labs longer, but he just sort of smiles and I realise I've been spending too much time with Sasori. I swear like it's been a job every week all through the rainy season, yeah, and some of them have lasted, like, days and everything. Not including the stuff where I have to stay at home working on bombs and stuff, but that's different, I guess. Kisame says there's usually less work in the dry season cause people are more out and about and it's harder to do stuff without people noticing, Maybe I'll get the time for some clay soon now the rain's letting up – I've had some sitting in the fridge for like weeks and I haven't touched it cause I've been so busy putting bombs together and running up and down the country with Sasori.

I asked Konan about free time last time I was at base and she just sort of shrugged and wouldn't say anything else about it. She's okay to talk to for a little bit but it's like ... I dunno, she's kind of like there's something missing. She might be an android. I never got any readings off her apart from the Akatsuki implant, but Sasori's got things that won't read as robots when they are, so I dunno. I think she's probably not an android, just a little bit weird. She's okay, though.

That reminds me, though – "Hey." Kisame sort of ... blinks at me questioningly. I always thought it was funny how someone who looks that much like a shark like refuses to talk with his mouth full. "Konan said you and Itachi were on some big job or something last week, yeah."

He sort of smiles and swallows his food and shrugs. "Yeah ... didn't go too well. Leader's pretty annoyed."

No wonder Konan didn't say anything else about it. "Oh yeah? What happened?"

Kisame glances round like he's worried someone's listening or something, and gets up. "Walk with me down to Brady and I'll tell you."

I grin, cause if it's too big for Peace Zone cameras then it's gotta be pretty interesting, so I get up too. Kisame sort of glances over his shoulder as he bins what's left of his sandwich and we head down one of the north tunnel walks, but he doesn't make any go of trying to shake anyone off or anything. He never does. When you're like six and a half foot tall or whatever and blue you kind of stick out too much to bother trying to be sneaky, and you don't _need_ to be sneaky when you can just stick anyone who comes after you through with a weapon like Samehada.

He doesn't say anything for a while, and I know it's cause he wants to be clear enough of Peace Zone, but I'm impatient.

"So what happened."

He pauses a moment, stopping in the tunnel walk, and then sighs. "We nearly got Nine."

I can tell that's supposed to be pretty big or something but it doesn't really mean much to me, and I guess I must look confused cause Kisame gets this "oh" sort of look on his face before I say, "What's nine?"

"– Shit. Look, uh, forget I said anything, okay?"

"What?"

"Seriously, Deidara, forget it. We were on a big job and it failed, that's all –"

"What the hell? I'm _in_ on this thing now and you're still not telling me shit? What –"

"Look, if you don't know it's because Leader doesn't _want_ you to know, alright? You'll find out eventually –"

"_Bullshit_! This is – this – ... What the hell."

Kisame rubs his temple. "Deidara ... Have you actually ever asked anyone what our goal is?"

"... No." I frown. "But –"

"Then don't act so surprised when you don't know things."

"Okay. Fine. What's our goal."

He sighs. "I can't tell you that."

"_What_? Why not?!"

"Because Leader would _skin_ me, Deidara, that's why! If you want to know, ask _him_. Or Konan – hell, ask _Sasori_, he'll tell you the same thing as me!"

I just glare at him. This is fucking ridiculous, yeah. I tell him so, and then I leave him there halfway to Brady and sod off home.

-

-

I message Sasori, on the way back, to ask him. Figures Kisame was right.

I'm all, "So what's our goal, yeah. What's _Nine_."

And he's just like, "Oh god, nobody told you yet? I'm not surprised."

He's such a wanker.

"So what, are you gonna tell me or not."

"You're not privy to that information, Deidara." I've talked to him enough that I can practically hear how smug that is in the words as I read them.

"Fuck you."

"It's up to the Leader, brat. Nobody is allowed to know unless he tells them."

"But I'm a _member_, yeah, same as you!"

"No. I've been a part of Akatsuki for ten years on account of possessing a variety of skills hugely useful to any organisation of this calibre. You were allowed to join a few months ago on the basis of our recent need to destroy a few things."

"Oh fuck off. So what, it's gonna be ten years before I get to know anything? I'm not even gonna _live_ that long, yeah."

"You're only eighteen."

"Seventeen."

"No, eighteen."

"What?"

"I found your data. You're eighteen years old. You were born as Daniel Amsel in 2847 to Goro Amsel and Sweet Desmarais, in the Donnerstag blocks."

There's this little pause.

"You were quite hard to find, you know. I was surprised."

I'm just staring. How the fuck could he find that. How the _fuck_.

"Do you need your memory jogging? When you were eight, your parents sold you to Victory Colline Industries for 150,000 Euros – that's really rather cheap, Deidara."

"It's not like it was my choice, yeah! Not like I was doing the haggling!"

I bet he's laughing – stupid _wanker_, I bet he's _laughing_.

"Lol." Wanker. "It says they still own you, as well. Now _that's_ interesting."

"They don't. I _left_, yeah."

"Legally they do. According to the documents, you're their property. Why's that, hm?"

"Must be an error, yeah."

"I don't know about that, _Daniel_. I think it's the kind of thing the Leader might want to know."

"Fuck you. Fuck you, you're not telling him anything, yeah."

"What would you do if I did?"

"Fuck you!" I've stopped completely. I don't know where I am, doesn't matter. Not paying attention. "I'd _find_ you, yeah."

"Calm down, brat. If I could find it out in my free time, I doubt it's anything he doesn't know already."

... Fuck it. I bet he _does_. And they're still keeping stuff from me, yeah! I look away from my other eye. Sign says I'm twenty minutes from Walbers. Some of the ink's come off the L, so it says WAIBERS. I think I knew a girl called Waiber once, back in the labs. She didn't have any cheeks, yeah? So you could see her teeth all the way back. I dunno why, but it was kind of sexy.

Sasori's blipping at me in my other eye. I leave it a moment before I go look, he's just telling me I'm stupid. Fuck him. I can't be bothered with this any more.

"Whatever, yeah. I'm gonna go home and sculpt."

"Oh – those clay things you leave on the tunnels?"

I pause. "Yeah. How d'you know about that."

"You'd be surprised."

I just frown ahead of me for a moment, picking up my pace again. "Right. Whatever. Yeah. I'm gonna go do that."

I close the window. It doesn't come back up again – he doesn't reply.

I don't go home straight away, just wander around the tunnels for a bit. Think about going back to talk to Kisame, but he's probably gonna be all short with me now.

This is all so dumb. Kisame's _right_, yeah. I never _did_ ask before. Maybe I should've. Didn't care, though.

Fuck that. I _don't_ care. I get to make my art, so what if they've got some stupid goal, not like I give a shit. Never cared about what any other jobs were for – not like I'd care about it, if they wanted to tell me.

... Yeah. Fuck them. I'm just along for the ride, yeah. It's not like I need to know what their dumb _purpose_ is to use it to make my art. Not like I care what they think it's _for_.

They can keep their stupid plans. I'm going to go make some sculptures and not think about their shit.


	12. 2:4

_Sorry for the delay on this one, and that this is mostly character-introductory filler. Still, vaguely enjoyable, I hope_

**2.4**

It's nearly May when the Leader calls us all to base and Konan tells us we're all going to be based there indefinitely because of a security leak or something. She doesn't let us go back to our old places to collect stuff, but when I go to the room she sets me all my stuff's been moved there already.

It's just one room with a bathroom, yeah. There's no skylight like there was the last few places I lived, but one of the walls is all window – tough glass you can see out of but not in. I give it the once-over with my other eye and it figures it's too strong for any of my regular bombs to even crack it. Hah. It's like a prison, yeah. Working for Akatsuki always was from the start, I guess, but having it laid out like this all physical is kind of a blow, yeah? It's not like I can't walk in and out of the base pretty much whenever, but if they want they can shut me in with no way out any time they like. Just a thought from the Leader to Zetsu and bam – Zetsu's like the base computer or something, yeah? He's not really a computer, he's mostly a guy, lives in the basement hub and he is so fucked up. Kisame says he used to be a nutcase murderer who like ate people and stuff, and he got sold to the labs cause prison was too good for him or something, so he basically got the whole shot of experimental gene-mods and cybernetic implant crap. Apparently he's the reason they don't do plant mods on people. He lives in the basement with the implant in his head wired up to the main computer, controlling base security, and he can like project his virtual consciousness to any computer connected to the internet, anywhere.

I know it probably doesn't do much, but since the couple of times I've spoken to him, I've kept the signal on my implant low. Having him talking in your head is really, really weird, yeah. I know Sasori could probably do that to me if he wanted to but at least he has the decency to message me instead.

But, I dunno. I guess I'll just have to work on something that can blast this glass through, yeah. I know I can do it. Til then the view's not bad – the Akatsuki base is pretty tall and I'm pretty high up. The floodwater's down, too, so there's cars starting to use the ground again, pushing the reflections of their headlights along the wet roads in front of them, like beams of fire. No-one's walking around on that yet – if you trip and put your hand out the ground'll still burn your hand off – but it'll be dry in a few days if the sun keeps up like it has been.

Mm. Sasori said he thought the security leak was to do with the last guy Kakuzu was working with, but then I reckon they wouldn't have hired a new guy to work with him straight away, yeah? I reckon it was just someone knew where one of us lived or something, especially considering the new guy's so ... I dunno. He's not the kind of guy like Kisame where you think if they say they're gonna stick by with you then they will as long as you hold up your end of the deal, yeah? He's the kind of guy where you reckon if he's working any gig like Akatsuki it's probably cause the Leader's got something on him, or they're making him, yeah. I dunno.

I run into him when I'm down in the kitchen. At first I was kinda expecting there to be some kind of canteen or something, yeah, but it figures Zetsu basically runs everything automatically so they don't have to hire people to operate stuff or anything. So it's just the nine of us and Zetsu's weird lackey or whatever who hangs around the basement and ... man I dunno what he even does. Fiddles with computers and wears a mask, yeah. I don't think he even needs to be there, but Zetsu likes him so I guess the Leader keeps him around so Zetsu doesn't flip a lid and stop running the system or something, yeah? Sometimes you see him upstairs and around and he's really fucking weird and tries to be everyone's friend. So I've sort of started being really careful about going into the kitchen and around and stuff 'cause _Jah_, if Tobi's in there you're basically like cornered the whole time you're getting your food and then even if I take it back to my room or whatever he _follows_ me, yeah, asking dumb questions.

Except this time it's just the new guy – I haven't really seen him about much but I've heard him here and there. He's kinda loud, yeah? So I figure that's okay and go to get myself some curry. He gives me this dirty look when I'm taking it out of the cooker and I look back at him all "what", and tell him, "You know Kakuzu basically kills everyone he works with, yeah?"

He rolls his eyes – they're red, I figure they're tinted – and looks at me all bored like he's not sure whether I deserve a reply or not. Apparently I do, cause he says, "Actually yeah, no-one round here will fucking shut up about it."

I pop some curry in my mouth and look at him sideways. "What, that doesn't fuss you? 'Cause -"

He takes a swig of his orange soda and sneers at me. "Don't try to be a smartass, princess, it makes you look even dumber. Fuck, if I thought anyone in this shithole could actually kill me, I'd _let_ them."

I raise my eyebrow, turning to look at him properly. _Princess_? Jah, what a dick. "Yeah? I could totally take you to _pieces_, yeah." I raise one hand to snap my fingers. "You wanna try it?"

"Oh yeah? Doubt it. What are you, fourteen?"

"S- _Eighteen_, yeah. Fuck you."

"Whatever. No thanks. Kind of flat-chested for eighteen, aren't you?"

"What." I glare at him. "Do I _sound_ like a girl."

"Look, princess, it was either flat-chested bitch with a deep voice or total fucking faggot. I just picked the least depressing option."

"_What_?

"You heard me. You make a shitty woman, but you make an even shittier man." He smirks. "I was being optimistic."

I roll my eyes, scowling, reach for my pocket. Put the curry down on the counter. "What, you _trying_ to get me to take you out? Cause I will." I roll a couple of little spheres between my fingers.

He looks at me like I'm crazy – okay, so I get that a lot, that's normal, except he doesn't look scared, and that's not. Just kinda ... I dunno, amused or something. "What the fuck, are those wincebombs? In your fucking _pocket_? Geez, what kind of stupid crazy freak _are_ you?"

I grin. They _are_ wincebombs, _technically_ – empty gum capsules filled with crap, mostly grade six, explode if they hit something. Making stuff like this isn't actually illegal cause you can't make money off it, yeah – transporting it's stupid dangerous and anyone can do it – and they figure if you do make it, you're retarded: it's really easy to make, cheap, but it's not worth prosecuting the morons who make it cause they kinda punish themselves, yeah. But, y'know. I'm _good_ at this stuff. Same basic structure as a wincebomb, couple of little differences that mean I can carry them around in my pocket without blowing my legs off if I bump into someone. Still a bit risky, but shit's boring when there's not any risk at _all_, yeah? So I just keep grinning at him, and shake my head, and tell him, "I'm not stupid, yeah."

"Could've fooled me."

He still doesn't look scared. This sort of stuff usually scares the hell of out of most people, yeah. It even makes Sasori all tense and he likes to make like nothing I do bothers him – but not this guy. It's bugging me, so I flick my wrist, let one of them go.

He doesn't move fast enough – I can tell watching him he's got kinda sluggy reflexes. It hits him in the knee and he goes down yelling curses.

"I got another one, yeah." He looks at me blood boiling in his eyes, and I grin at him wide and hold up the other bomb – and he starts laughing.

"Fuck – hahaha – fuck, you little _bitch_. Ha – That _hurt_."

That shakes me for a moment, yeah, more than it should. I mean, it's not like I haven't run into crazy bastards before, yeah? I narrow my eyes and glare down at him, lying there with his leg blown off – except it's, like – I dunno. The flesh is squirming, like it's full of something tiny and alive and he's laughing and I've seen this before but I don't know where – and while I'm staring at him, his leg's like – coming back. Regenerating or something.

I take a step back, and it clicks. Nanobots.

He pushes himself sitting up with his leg all there to the shin now, muttering. "Shit, they fucked up the knee again –"

"You've got _nanobots_."

He looks at me, annoyed, but smug. "Yeah, so what. You never seen 'em before?"

"What? Yeah, I have ..." A couple of times, yeah. A couple of people. Except they both died in the labs. Everyone knows what happened with that technocult back in the 80s – _nobody_ gets nanobots cause even if you're crazy enough to want to get it done there's no-one who'll do it for you, yeah. It takes ages and it's really complicated and if you get it wrong then you're _dead_. And no-one ever gets it right, not even lab tech.

"Then stop looking like someone hit you in the face with a fucking rainfish and do something useful with your retarded self."

"What, like help you up? Yeah right." I wouldn't anyway, but the idea of touching a hand full of nanobots is kinda ... just ... no.

"Like get the hell out of here before I come over there and break your stupid pussy _neck_."

I glare at him a moment or two, but like hell I'm taking my chances with fucking nanobots. I reach over to grab my curry and eye him for a moment, and then leave. I'm not a coward, yeah? I don't reckon he could break my anything – I've got more bombs and I'd like to see his nanobots rebuild his _brain_ – I just –

"Hi, Mr. Deidara!"

Oh fuck. Tobi. I stuff the bomb back in my pocket and glare at him, but glaring at Tobi always feels kind of pointless – like it's not getting to him through that stupid orange mask, yeah. I don't know what it's for but I pretty much don't care.

"Is that curry? What kind?"

"Uh, rabbit – look, Tobi, I'm kinda busy, yeah, I'll catch you later or something. Go bother Hidan, he's in the kitchen and I think he needs a hand with his leg, yeah." And I slam the door in his face and lock it and go to sit by the window to finish my curry – and hope like hell that Tobi _does_ go bother Hidan, because last time this happened, when I opened the door again, he was still out there, yeah. Waiting. I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with him.


End file.
